A teacher notes yet another damaging effect of the overwhelming amount of standardized testing and teachers removed from the class to score these exams in our schools:
Our last day of five ELA teachers out of
building is tomorrow. Thursday starts the five math teachers per day. That only
lasts one week. With normal unexpected absences we have had up to nine teachers
out of building on any given day since grading began two weeks ago.
The DOE
thinks that's okay. I had another testing consequence come my way today when an
eighth grade parent asked about their child having multiple subject tests on
the same day. I know that having tests on same day is not ideal, but I pointed
out that it has been three weeks since some teachers could give any tests on
the material they have been teaching in their classes.
One of the aspects of
the data driven nonsense of the past decade has been the absolute disregard of
"data" collected by teachers. Teachers are always taught to find
multiple ways to assess their students, keeping portfolios of various types of
assessments, upon which report card grades can be derived. This work seems more
and more to be considered worthless. We all know the idea of any standardized
test is to normalize results across diverse populations, but what is taught
everyday must also be assessed.
As standardized testing takes on more and more
value, teacher generated data will not only be more and more ignored, it will
be harder and harder to find the time to creatively assess students. One can
imagine, thinking about the disgusting piece on Joel Klein in yesterday's NY Times,
how his company will be soon at the door of school districts across the country
with a suite of digital products, designed like baby food, for easy digestion
and predictable results, further marginalizing teachers.
1 comment:
Well said, which I find thrilling. Thank you.
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